New study says being active on Facebook makes people live longer

A new study suggests that being active on Facebook may help making people live longer.

The study was carried out on 12 million Facebook users. The researchers stated that the nature of the findings is not a correlation but an association, resulting to a no cause-and-effect proven.

The study conducted by University of California San Diego researchers. As the lead authors of the research, William Hobbs and James Fowler collaborated with teams at Facebook and Yale. The study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy Sciences.

The study aims to prove that people who enhance and maintain social interactions for a a long time are more likely to live longer than those who don’t.

Keeping social media networks is just part of an interaction phenomenon, online activity takes place.

As the study correlates online behavior with keeping real-life social networks, the findings turns out to be consistent to support other social studies.

According to the research, people who accepts more friendship in their life tend to have a lower risk of mortality. But there is no relation proven concerning people who initiate friendships.

“Mortality risk is lowest for those with high levels of offline social interaction and moderate levels of online social interaction,” explains the study.

The results pointed out that people who use social media moderately may have lower risk of developing array of health issues. But while the study is an associative one, it could also become a pillar in investigating the way online social circles have transformed people physically, emotionally and socially.

The study analyzed the behavior of people who have a Facebook account versus to those who don’t. It has been revealed that people who have an expanded social networks, tend to be healthier and live longer.

“Interacting online seems to be healthy when the online activity is moderate and complements interactions offline,” noted Hobbs, a postdoctoral fellow at Northeastern University.

The researchers also promote moderation in using social media, and by having real-life circle of friends and control over time spent on the social network could empower users to be more active offline too.